The public domain is just starting to catch up with the film career of Louise Brooks. As of January 1, 2021, copyrighted works from 1925 have entered the United States public domain, where they are free to use and build upon. These works include celebrated books such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time, silent films featuring Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, and popular songs by “Ma” Rainey and Fats Waller.
The public domain also now includes a short story, "The Street of the Forgotten Men," by the author & muckraking journalist George Kibbe Turner. It was first published in 1925, and served as the basis for the highly regarded film made later that same year titled The Street of Forgotten Men. As Brooks' fans know, that film was the first in which the actress appeared. In an uncreditted bit part that lasts only about five minutes, Brook plays a gangster's moll with aplomb. Despite her brief role, The Street of Forgotten Men is a terrific, almost Lon Chaney-esque silent film deserving greater recognition. (See my 2012 Huffington Post piece, "Strange Silent Film Screens in Syracuse," for more about Brooks and The Street of Forgotten Men.)
This blog begins a serialization, if you will, of the original George Kibbe Turner story, which will be presented in two parts. Here begins an illustrated version of "The Street of the Forgotten Men," as it was originally published in Liberty magazine. It is, as it claims, "A Romance of the Underworld -- The Strange Story of a Bowery Cinderella and a Beggar Who Lost Himself for Love."
Tune-in tomorrow for the second half of George Kibbe Turner's "The Street of the Forgotten Men."
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